The '12 SBJ/SBD Sports Facilities & Franchises conference kicked off this morning with a panel of high-ranking team execs talking about how to keep their franchises on track in a changing sports landscape. Jaguars President Mark Lamping talked about understanding customers and knowing who they are, as fans now “have so many ways to connect with us that we never had to worry about.” Lamping: “In the past, you knew who your season-ticket holders were. Now, you can have a customer that is re-tweeting tweets, goes to our website, likes us on Facebook, is communicating with his or her social network about things with our franchise. But we have no idea who they are.”
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Wilf says Vikings are battling in-home experience
in getting fans to come out to stadium |
NO PLACE LIKE HOME?: As the Vikings gear up for their new stadium, which is scheduled to open in time for the '16 NFL season, co-Owner & President Mark Wilf said, “What we’re going to be looking at very, very hard is how do we get people out of their seats. The in-home experience is so good right now, we’ve got to make going to the game something exciting, something different.” Falcons President & CEO Rich McKay added, “The in-game experience is probably as important an area as there is. We’ve really focused on it the last three years and really ramped up what we deliver. We take the driveway-to-driveway look, and our fans expect a lot from us.” Noting the advent of the RedZone channel and other benefits that exist for fans who stay at home to watch games, McKay said, “We need to deliver a media experience, and we need to understand that the media experience is not just three hours of football.”
SOCIAL LIVING: Twitter remains a important avenue for teams to reach both existing fans and prospective fans. 76ers CEO Adam Aron said he sent out more than 2,200 tweets during the season as a way to help rejuvenate what had been a declining fan base. He said, “It boggles my mind that I could communicate with 125,000 potential customers, 10 times a day, instantaneously with instant feed back -- I do it all for free.” Aron added, “When I started out in advertising in 1981, you would spend two months working on a magazine ad. You would send it to the magazine, and three months later it would run. People would look at it for six seconds and they’re done. The communication now is so different.”
QUICK HITS:
- McKay, on the need for venues to upgrade the capability for fans to be able to text and tweet more successfully: “All I want to be able to do when I go to a game is be able to do what I do when I go to Starbucks. Fans sitting in the stands pay pretty good money for their tickets. They want to text their buddies, they want to talk about fantasy football -- they can’t do any of it.”
- Wilf, on HBO’s struggles to find a team to follow during training camp this season: “If a team that’s on ‘Hard Knocks’ wins the Super Bowl, you’ll have 32 teams wanting to do it next year.”
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